


promises promises

by weekend_conspiracy_theorist



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Past Spock/Nyota Uhura, mentioned Bones, mentioned Spock, san junipero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 19:04:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10725330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weekend_conspiracy_theorist/pseuds/weekend_conspiracy_theorist
Summary: Chris takes San Junipero for a test drive, and Nyota never expected to fall in love again.





	promises promises

**Author's Note:**

> A chuhura san junipero au!!! I [posted this on tumblr a while ago under-and-inspired-by a lovely aesthetic by chubbycaptain,](https://enterprisetrampstamp.tumblr.com/post/158917020212/chubbycaptain-chuhura-san-junipero-au-insp) but I'm just now getting around to posting it over here, whoops
> 
> some of the details aren't an exact translation to the episode, because I, uh, misremembered things, but oh well

Comatose at twenty-one; an old woman who’d barely lived; a nurse-practitioner with half a degree in a simulation where no one even needs a band-aid. Christine doesn’t ever remember feeling this lost out in the real world, but then–comatose at twenty-one. She’d never gotten the chance to be.

Passing up San Junipero when she never got to live her normal life would be stupid, according to Len- Len thinks a lot of things are stupid, including Chris’s “harebrained scheme” to marry him so she can shed this mortal coil for good- but she can’t help but feel awkward and out of place to the point that…

Well, who knows what’s on the other end of the metaphorical tunnel?

She could ask him to let her go so she could find out, and he would. They barely even know each other anyway; Len’s just her doctor, for all that he’s the closest thing she has to a friend.

Watching the other woman, so beautiful and carefree and looking like she belongs in this time in a way that Chris both does and doesn’t, she feels a jumble of conflicting emotions. Jealousy, desire, and half a dozen other things that are less painful yet far more nebulous, things that make her want to smile when their eyes catch briefly across the room.

She looks away instead, feeling the blush steal across her cheeks, and wonders if she should just leave. There must be a library somewhere, she figures, the kind of place she felt at home in forty years and only a couple weeks ago.

Christine’s just about made up her mind, is on the verge of unfolding her legs, when a warm, slim body slides into the booth next to her and throws a companionable arm over her shoulders. “I’m Nyota,” the woman from before says, “and you’re following my lead, okay?”

(She doesn’t go to the library that might not even exist, but she still ends up running away.)

***

When they fall together, it’s everything and nothing like Christine had imagined. She has no baseline to tell if it’s because she’s living in a world made of zeroes and ones; she finds she doesn’t really care.

“Beautiful,” she whispers, lips soft against Nyota’s side, and long, clever fingers find hers where they’re tangled in the bedsheets, squeeze tight.

“You too, Chris,” and it’s almost like a promise.

Of what, Christine’s not sure, and she can’t seem to find her again to ask.

***

“It’s too much for me,” Nyota admits, exposing weakness like she trusts Christine to follow the Hippocratic oath she never got the chance to take. “The way I feel about you, it’s–this is supposed to be fun, a last huzzah for a dying woman.”

Christine doesn’t say, “Me too,” because it’s been her only huzzah, really. She licks her lips, watches Nyota’s fingers flutter over crossed arms, and stays quiet.

“You could’ve just let me _go_.”

(Both frustratedly complaining and softly wondering.)

“Not really.”

(She’s never known how to stop caring about people.)

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Nyota admits, words like the butterfly kisses she’d rained along the line of Christine’s clavicle so many weeks ago, and tangles their fingers together once more.

Later they sit on the porch, a beach breeze tugging at their hair, and Chris doesn’t know how to explain Len, the fiance she doesn’t want but needs. She doesn’t want Nyota to see the wizened thing she really is, doesn’t want to reveal just how little life experience she has outside of the bright lights of San Junipero, but with their thighs pressed tight together, a warm palm on her knee…

She tells Nyota where to find her.

“You won’t like what you see,” she whispers, and Nyota’s lips on her shoulder are a silent disagreement.

***

White dresses and champagne drunk straight from the bottle, sand under bare feet–Christine’s giddy and Len’s off the hook, bless the grumpy Southern bastard, and for a second she almost thinks she could have it all.

A second-first life, a loving marriage, and if not a career then at least a world with infinite distraction.

“He was _selfish_ ,” she shouts, the rug pulled out from under her, and Nyota’s eyes are flinty.

“You could never understand what Spock and I went through,” she spits back. “Forty-nine years of marriage and the loss of a child–”

A daughter older than Christine in everything but number–

“Forty-nine _years_ of standing by each other and working through arguments, and I don’t want to live in a world without him, without our daughter, any more than he did!”

***

Medicine is worthless in San Junipero; she reaches out anyway, two fingers extended to take a pulse that necessarily must be there–

Nyota’s whisked away, and Chris squeezes her eyes tight shut, lets her hand fall. She’s certain, somewhere in the pit of her stomach, that Nyota will choose to slip away before she comes back and faces Christine again.

The only heartbreak Christine’s known in the past was the look on her mother’s face when she kissed Janice Rand under the oak tree in the backyard; it’s no easier knowing she deserved it this time.

***

“Hey.”

Nyota licks her lips, uncharacteristically fidgety, and Christine blinks owlishly behind glasses she can’t seem to let go of.

“Hi,” she answers, feeling a smile slowly spread across her face. Her toes are buried in damp, cold sand, her ass half-asleep, a textbook sliding unnoticed from its precarious position atop her knees. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“It’s my house,” Nyota scoffs. She tilts her head consideringly, admitting, with a trace of amusement in her voice, ”But we are married, so I guess it’s yours, too.” She holds out a hand, and Chris scrambles to accept it, to let herself be pulled to her feet, to be pulled in tight against Nyota.

“I thought…” she begins, but lets herself trail off in favor of tracing Nyota’s sharp cheekbone with her thumb, watching the flutter of eyelashes and ghost of a grin she gets in response.

“I can always leave later, can’t I?” Nyota shrugs with a nonchalance Chris’s sure she doesn’t really feel. “I only get one chance at staying.”

“They’ll understand,” Christine offers, tentative because she knows it’s an empty platitude from her lips.

Nyota lets it comfort her anyway. “I think so,” she agrees, with a breezy voice, and then shrieks out a surprised laugh as Chris abruptly leans down and lifts her in a bridal carry and strides purposefully towards the Jeep. “We have all the time in the world, Chris!”

“And we’re not going to waste a _second_ of it,” she answers, fervent, fingers curling over one dark, bony knee.

Nyota’s eyes are soft, her palm warm on the back of Christine’s neck.

“Impossible,” she promises.

“I’m with you.”


End file.
